Tuesday, November 2, 2010

The Fight for the Laplace Box continues…
(BEWARE THIS REVIEW IS SPOILER HEAVY.. READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION.)
Well...there is so much to talk about that I am writing this review in 2 parts. I watched this episode using my japanese friend's Slingbox (He got the Special Blu-Ray Edition)...so I only get to watch it once. I apologize for any grammars, spelling, or misinterpretation mistakes ahead of time, as I wrote this pretty fast....

The second episode of Gundam UC begins exactly where the first episode left off, with the RX-0 Unicorn Gundam (pilot by Banagher Links) locked in battle with The Sleeve’s NZ-666 Kshatriya (piloted by Marida Cruz) outside of space colony Industrial 7. And it was no surprise that the Kshatriya would be quickly overpowered by the Unicorn Gundam in Destroy mode and was forced to retreat. The Sleeves's secret operation to obtain the Laplace from the Vist Foundation ended in failure.

Mineva Zabi / Audrey Burne and the rest of Banahger's classmates made it off Industrial 7 and were rescued by Riddthe Mercenas (piloting the RGZ-95 ReZEL), and they were brought on board the Federation's mobile suit carrier Nahel Argama. The Nahel Argama is actually a part of the Londo Bell task force assigned to seek out the Neo Zeon remnants, but in this episode, we saw that it was the Federation ECOAS who was calling the shots. 'ECOAS' which stands for Earth COlony ASteroid is the Earth Federation's special task group in the 0096 U.C. It was formed not long after the first Neo-Zeon war. It was created as a support group for Londo Bell team. The leader of the ECOAS, Daguza Mackle, seems to know about Vist Foundation's betrayal ahead of time, and were sent to intercept the Laplace Box at Industrial 7.

After the brief skirmish with the Kshatriya, it seems the Unicorn Gundam's NT-D system was too much for Banagher to handle and he fell unconcious. The immobile Unicorn Gundam was also retrieved by the Negal Argama. Staffs on board the Nahel Argama quickly learns that the Unicorn Gundam might actually holds clue to the Laplace Box, and so the mobile suit carrier set course for Anahiem Electronic's moon factory Von Braun.

Once The Sleeves were able to locate the position of the Nahel Argama, their flagship Rewloola went into pursuit of the Nahel Argama with Full Frontal (the leader of The Sleeves, who is considered the second coming of Char) leading his special guard unit to retrieve data that he suspect the Nahel Argama had obtained on the Laplace Box. Full Frontal lead the assault in his MSN-06S Sinanju, and was able to single handedly destroyed much of the Nahel Argama defenses. On board the Nahel Argama, Daguza Mackle was able to identify the true identity of Audrey Burne to be the Zeon princess Mineva Zabi, and took her as a hostage to bargain for their escape. The standoff quickly broke down and Full Frontal was determined to destroy the entire ship. A squardron of Nahel Argama's ReZELs tried to fend off the aggressors, but were mostly destroyed by Full Frontal with his Sinanju. Riddhe's ReZEL was the only mobile suit left standing between Full Frontal and the Negal Argama.

With the help of a cowardly Anahiem Electronic representative who wanted the Unicorn Gundam to help defend the ship long enough for their escape; Banagher was able to take off in the Unicorn Gundam and a spectacular battle was ensured with Full Frontal...

While watching the 2nd episodes, I must admit that I was really dazzled by the choreography of each battle sequence; the mobile suits does not just fly, shoot & explode as with Gundam SEED & Gundam 00. The action really has excitement to them and the tactics & strategy used by each unit makes sense. And I really enjoyed all the important discussion between the characters in this OVA series thus far, every important conversation feels like a history lesson in the UC era. =)

I will continue with the synopsis for the second half of the episode in Part II of my review. Here are some extra info that I dug up on certain parts from this episode that I found interesting.

Laplace Box

The second episode continues to give the viewers a little bit more information about the Laplace box. But it is a rather moot point for such mystery, since the answer can be found by typing in the word ‘Laplace Box’ on Google, you will get your answer in less than a few seconds.Actually, we all got a small glimpse of the content of the Laplace Box at the beginning of episode one.

Basically, the Laplace Box contains “the original charter for which the UC century was found.The charter dictates that self governing rights and freedom should be given to the inhabitants of space without interference from earth.In other words, it proves that the idealism of the Zeon had been right all along.But the corrupted Federation governments denied them these rights that were promised to them at the beginning of the era.That is the power that the Laplace Box has to end the earth Federation, and end their iron grip over the spacenoids." (From Gundam Wiki)

The Laplace Box is certainly a powerful weapon against the Federation. The Vist Foundation had been using it as leverage to get their way with both the Federation and Anaheim Electronic. But from episode one, we learned that the Vist Foundation wanted to fix things and correct the mistake that was made many years ago. To do so, the foundation thought it was a good idea to give the 'key' to the Laplace Box to The Sleeves, and at the same time to give them a warning not to revive the Zeon ideology. It was not mention to whom the Laplace Box would be given to, but I just suspect that Unicorn Gundam is somehow related to the Laplace Box.

Marida Cruz
Marida Cruz is a elite artificial newtype pilot of The Sleeves. She is also known as "Ple Twelve" who is a last clone of Elpeop Ple from ZZ Gundam series. She fought with her other sisters in the 1st Neo Zeon movement, and was the only survivor left unconscious in a MS escape pod. Later, she was revived and sold into sex slavery. It was not known how she met the Neo Zeon remnants The Sleeves, but it was pretty obvious her skills and loyalty would serve them well in their cause.

The original Elpeop Ple was in the service of the Neo Zeon as well, and piloted the Qubeley Mk.II in the ZZ Gundam series. However, she defected over to the AEUG becuase of her attachment to the lead character Judau. She died protecting Judau from her sister, Ple Two whom piloted the Psyco Gundam Mk.II. Quite a history this character had, and is very interesting to see all the little tie-ins that Gundam UC has in it.

RX-0 Unicorn Gundam

I really like the technology behind the Unicorn Gundam. As mentioned in the episode, the Unicorn Gundam is a flagship mobile suit that was developed by the Vist Foundation for the UC Project, a top secret program that is a part of the E.F.S.F. Reorganization Plan. The Unicorn Gundam incorporates the use of psyco-frame throughout the chassis of the suit. And the idea is for the NT-D (NewType Destroyer) system to instantly interpret the brainwaves of the pilot (Newtypes) into machine code, and be able to control the mobile suit as if it was his/her own body. The NT-D system seems to be an advanced psycommu system.

At the beginning of this episode, we saw how Banagher activated the NT-D system for the first time, and the Unicorn Gundam transformed into Destroy Mode exposing the psycoframe. Though we do not know how he was able to activate it, but it seems like certain requirement must be met to be able to do so. Maybe it was all the unicorn pictures that he was forced to stare at when he was a kid that did it. The NT-D system allows the pilot to control the mobile suit via thoughts alone with increased performance & mobility to the mobile suit. However, there is a 5 mins. limiter for the NT-D system, and the Unicorn Gundam will transform back to Unicorn Mode. But still, it is really enjoyable for a long time UC fan like me to see how Gundam had evolved since I was just a kid.

The Unicorn Gundam's customized beam rifle is certainly the mother of all beam rifles. It was designed with an energy condenser, that can produce an output equal to a large mega-particle cannons (remember that huge blue particle cannon that the Hyaku Shiki had to lug around in Zeta Gundam? LOL). Each shot use up an entire E-Pacs battery, and it seems like for each sortie, the Unicorn Gundam can carry up to 3 E-Pacs magazines (one loaded, and 2 on the back waist skirts).

It was also neat to know that the Unicorn Gundam's shield has an I-Field generator installed, An I-Field is the generation of an energy barrier that encompasses an object protecting it from beam energy by deflecting it. The I-Field technologies has been used over the course of previous Gundam series as well, so is nothing new here. But if you remembered watching Gundam 0083 'Stardust Memory' OVA, the I-Field generator for the Dendrobium mobile armor was huge, and is just awesome to see that the technology had been miniaturized to be installed onto the Unicorn Gundam shield unit.

I am looking forward to seeing more of the Unicorn Gundam in action in the next episode, since the mobile suit has other potential that has yet to be revealed.... not to mention that a more powerful Unicorn Banshee that would probably debut in episode 5.

Part II of this review will focus mainly on Full Frontal, the MSN-06S Sinanju, and my ratings for Ep.02...
(*Images from this post were found on various websites on the internet*)